ACLU & Karuks sue over salmon ad

By Phil Hayworth

Pioneer Press

Fort Jones , CA

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

page E4, column 3

pioneerp@sisqtel.net

Go figure! One of the most liberal cities - nay, most liberal municipal transportation entities - in the country won't allow the Karuk Tribe and other proponents of dam removal along the upper Klamath River to advertise on its busses.

And now, the Tribe is ticked off.

The ACLU of Oregon, along with the Karuk Tribe, last week filed a lawsuit against Portland 's Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, alleging the public bus company has violated federal and state constitutional free speech protections in its rejection of an advertisement it deems "political."

The Karuk ad depicts three salmon facing a wall of electrical sockets, along with the caption, "Salmon shouldn't run up your electric bill. They should run up the Klamath River."

The ad then directs the public to a website - www.salmonforsavings.com - for more information. But that, says TriMet, is just too racy.

"They claim the right to refuse for just about any reason they want, but their policy is that they don't want to become a public forum for the dissemination, debate and or discussion of public issues," said ACLU attorney David Fidanque.

In other words, sleazy jeans ads or even those pitching fast food are OK. Anything that has any true substance isn't. Fidanque said that governments - and TriMet is a government entity - can't discriminate against free speech based on content. He agrees, however, that racist diatribes and other such screed are generally off limits and that any sane company would argue against it. But he's stumped by TriMet's sudden desire to steer clear of anything that would upset a bus rider.

"We think they've drawn the net way too broadly and it can't fly under the constitutional protections of free speech," he said.

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